Did Stalin know?
From Peter.!. Murray Sir: Clarke Hayes states (Letters, 3 July) that Stalin had not been informed at the Potsdam conference that the atomic bomb was ready for use.
Others disagree — H. Montgomery Hyde states in his Atom Bomb Spies (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1980) that Truman told Stalin at the Potsdam conference and that Stalin was 'apparently unimpressed.. He adds that Lord Moran gave details of the conversation to Canada's prime minister in 1948. I have read elsewhere that if Stalin was 'unimpressed-, it was most probably due to intelligence sources in the US having kept the Soviet government well informed on progress there.
I also think it likely — on the balance of probabilities — that President Truman was more concerned about the American and Allied troops having to fight their way onshore in the southern islands of the Japanese archipelago than about the Russians in the remote northern islands of Japan.
Peer J. Murray
Kenmore, Queensland, Australia
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